Yesterday's News
by Jessica R Vance
Summary: "Molly stared at him. This seemed a strange time for an ego trip, even for Sherlock."


**Yesterday's News  
**S.J. Hartsfield

The door clattered shut and Molly wrested one foot from her shoe, holding it still with the free toe of the other trainer. "Sherlock?" she called. She shifted the shopping so that she held it all in one hand, balancing unsure on her stockinged foot to remove the other shoe. "Sherlock?"

The silence was neither unexpected nor unusual. He often ignored her, seldom spent the energy to acknowledge her. She made her way to the kitchen, giving the flat the same cursory inspection she always did. Not on the sofa. Not in the loo; when she glanced down the hallway, the door was open. "They were out of whole milk," she offered to no one as she began to put the shopping away. "So I got semi-skimmed." She paused, fridge hanging half-open. "Sherlock?" Usually a third attempt goaded him into a half-hearted_ hmm_, if nothing else.

Utter stillness.

"Oh God," she muttered. She left the shopping, scampered up the short staircase to check her own room. Unlikely, of course, but just in... no. Gone. Every room empty and quiet and oh God he was _gone_ -

She rounded the corner to the entryway and nearly had a heart attack when she ran into him. "Sherlock!" Oh, thank God..." On instinct, she lay a palm on his coat's lapel. She thought - expected, even - that he would bat her hand away, quirk a condescending eyebrow. But he made no attempt to shake her off, only walked in some sort of daze into the sitting room. Her hand fell limply away from him. "Sherlock?" She'd said his name five times in as many minutes and it was beginning to sound strange to her.

Then it hit. "Oh my – you were _out_, where did you go?"

He was staring at the newspaper on the coffee table.

_It had been nine months. Nine months, and his restlessness had come to its full gestation. "I'm just popping out to do the shopping," Molly said, somewhere distant, somewhere that echoed in his increasingly stagnant mind. "Do you need anything?"_

_Need anything, need anything, there were a million things he needed. He said nothing. _

_Click, the door closed. He drummed his fingertips against each other. The nearest grocer's was three blocks down and one over. Getting everything on the list would take approximately twenty-three minutes, and that was if the place was empty, and it wouldn't be, not at two p.m. on a Saturday, because Molly did her shopping the same time as everyone else._

_As everyone else._

Everyone_ else._

_He had time._

_He hurried down the high street, taking lefts and rights without thinking, as though being led by an unseen thread. He'd be careful. He could blend in when he wanted, especially now, now it had been so long. Nobody cared anymore. No one was looking for him. He would be invisible. He only wanted to see._

_Tesco was packed; he knew it would be. It was simplicity to stand across the road, passed often by cabs and lorries and people, so many people who jostled and bumped him and didn't care one whit that he was alive. It had been nine months, and the public had a short memory._

_His eyes worked quickly, efficiently, scanning the comings and goings and there. There he was. Two bags of shopping, far too much really, and clearly far more than he was actually eating. He was thinner. Dark circles ringed his eyes, his cheeks were drawn, the deep lines around his mouth bespoke absolute misery. Here was a man who was surviving._

_And he was still the only person in the world who could cause that tightness in his chest, that alien tug on his abdomen that made him feel as though he was being drawn out, pulled from the depths of his mind into the world where _he_ lived._

_It took everything he had, every shred of self-control, not to call out to him. He wanted to raise his hand, to draw attention, to let him know that yes, yes, I'm still here. To wipe away the worry from his brow and make him smile again. His fists clenched at his sides, so hard he could feel his blunt nails plunging into his skin. Possibly breaking it, but that was irrelevant. He'd stopped himself, and that was what mattered._

_He watched him budge his way down the street, avoiding other people as though they carried some sort of disease. Didn't want to be touched. He kept his head low, eyes hollow and trained on the ground. A soldier on a mission. Acquire food, return to base. It made something in his stomach turn and ache. _

_Then his head was up. Suddenly alert, suddenly focused. He followed his gaze._

_The resemblance was uncanny, really. Even he had to admit. Tall, wild dark hair. Thinner, perhaps, if that were possible, but undoubtedly similar. He looked back. His expression had cleared – he looked hopeful, looked half-mad, and was running toward the man, shoving people out of his way now, yelling. Yelling his name. Someone was going to call the authorities. But the man got in a cab, unheeding, and his pace slowed once more. __Favoured__ his leg. Slowed to a stop and rested his hands on his miserable knees. Grit his teeth against the hurt._

_He turned away. He couldn't watch anymore. Besides (he checked his watch), Molly would likely be back soon._

"Did you hear me?"

Sherlock looked up from the paper, expression blank. "No."

Molly bit the inside of her cheek. _Figures_. "I said, where did you go? You're not supposed to leave the flat. _You_ told me that."

His eyes had dropped once more to the headlines. "Do you see this?" he asked, barely audible. "There's nothing. Nothing about me."

Molly stared at him. This seemed a strange time for an ego trip, even for Sherlock. "What – "

"Not a headline." He ripped the paper open, tearing the front page a bit. Didn't seem to notice. "Not a follow-up." Turned the page, violent. "Not even an abstract." He tore through the pages then, near-frantic, doubtless skimming the text, rapid-fire, for his own name. He flung the paper to the floor. Molly realized with a start that he was _furious_. His face was red and creased with wrath, the muscles in his jaw twitching frenetically. She found his usual broodiness attractive – her weakness for bad boys – but this… this was frightening.

He whirled on her then, eyes like flint beneath his drawn brow. "The world has _forgotten_," he hissed, taking a step toward her. She matched it – one back. "The entire _world_ has forgotten me. No one mourns a mad faker for long, Molly. So _why_." He reached out, arms long enough to span the space between them, and took her by the shoulders. Rough. Her heart leapt into her throat. "Why is it that he has _not_?"

She didn't have an answer. She had questions, so many questions, but no answers for him, nothing to quell the tempest she could see raging in his mind. He dropped his arms. "I think… maybe you shouldn't go out again," she hedged.

He looked down at the torn paper, despondent on the rug. And in a moment, everything rushed out of him, air from a balloon, and he sagged, useless, a flat as the text before him. "No," he agreed. His voice was low, impossibly soft, impossibly _sad_. "No. I won't go out again."

The End


End file.
